Application service providers operating on a Local Area Network (LAN), such as AT&T, can receive a number of requests from various users of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) enabled communication devices operating on a Wide Area Network (WAN) for any one or more of a plurality of multi-media service offerings. These requests may be directed to a predetermined application server of a plurality of application servers associated with the application service provider, which is adapted to provide feature processing for the requested multi-media service.
As application service providers continue to add multi-media service offerings and corresponding application servers for providing feature processing for each of the requested multi-media services, there is an increasing need to support preliminary multi-media communications with customers operating at the various SIP-enabled communication devices to collect caller-entered data and to process the caller-entered data to determine if the customer is authorized to receive the requested multi-media service.
Therefore, an unsolved need remains for a multi-media communication service provider system that is adapted to provide a direct multi-media interface with SIP-enabled communication devices for supporting preliminary multi-media communications between the multi-media communication service provider system and the number of SIP-enabled communication devices operating on the WAN.